


Conduit

by Eatsscissors



Category: Legend of the Seeker
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-07
Updated: 2010-10-07
Packaged: 2017-10-12 12:24:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/124783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eatsscissors/pseuds/Eatsscissors
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She will not be cast aside.  Post television series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conduit

**Author's Note:**

> That is a very literary-sounding summary for what basically boils to porn without an ounce of shame anywhere about its person.

Cara had thought that watching Richard and Kahlan moon tragically at one another would be one of the most patience-trying situations that she would ever deal with in her life. She really ought to have known better than to tease fate like that. If Kahlan and Richard pining had been irritating, then the two of them sated was nearly enough to make her give Darken Rahl a second thought. The mental armor that they had previously needed against even casual touches made in the wrong moment no longer necessary, Richard and Kahlan could rarely be found more than a hand-span away from each other even when they were forced into that. They stood with with their noses and foreheads pressed up against one another in quiet moments, they rode the same horse even though they had money enough for each their own and little need to keep their heads down once word spread that the Keeper had been beaten, they held hands like children just starting to flush with the realization that the opposite sex was good for more than knocking down into the dirt. Cara kept her thoughts on the matter to herself and brought her agiel down onto the necks of banelings who would actually stay dead this time with perhaps more force than was actually necessary. Zedd puttered about as if this was the greatest jest in the world, as if Richard and Kahlan being able to be together in it was a sweeter victory than the fact that the four of them had saved it in the first place. He was either too deaf to hear the less innocent things that they crept away and did at night, or the old man was a pervert. Cara spent the better part of a day trying to solve this riddle before she decided that she would not be able to sleep with one of the answers.

She was woken in the night by a woman's cry, something that balanced on the edge of pain but came from a much different place. Even Zedd turned over and made a snuffling noise in his sleep before he settled again.

It turned out that venting frustrations against the remaining Sisters of the Dark was every bit as satisfying as the banelings.

*  
She didn't miss the way that Kahlan nagged at her with that undercurrent of affection, and then amusement at the faces that Cara gave her in return. She didn't miss the few quiet moments that she and Richard used to take as they readied the horses each morning, neither one of them speaking because neither one of them needed to. She still had her place within the camp as their guardian if a real battle should break loose while Kahlan and Richard were looking deeply into each other's eyes and the wizard was composing love sonnets or something. They still needed her.

Zedd left three days after Kahlan had nearly managed to bring the banelings back out of the earth again with her cry so that he could sort out some minor trouble that his brother had gotten into; as he put it, it that required not the presence of the Seeker or the Mother Confessor, but perhaps a deft word or two with a magistrate and a few pieces of silver passing hands. Cara was growing accustomed to Richard and Kahlan slipping off to be away in the night; she only turned over and called out muzzily as she heard clothing move, "Take another sword than the one in your pants, Richard."

His voice was embarrassed, laughing, as he exclaimed, "Cara!" and Kahlan replied in the voice which meant she was smiling, "We'll be careful."

At least they did her the honesty of not pretending that they were off to do anything other than rut. Cara sat up long enough to feed the fire high enough so that it would ward away predators and give the lovers a beacon with which to find their way home once they were clothed again, turned over again to find her way to sleep again. She dreamed of a dark-haired man with improbable blue eyes who had not been kind, of a man with hair the color of hay and earth who had been, a golden woman who turned her back before Cara could see her face but who wore a long braid and looked good in red. Even in the dream, she could feel her breath coming faster; the figures were replaced, became a dark-haired man and a brunette woman. He was bronzed by sun, she was nearly the same color as the white dress that she wore to officiate her duties. Cara could still see the lines that she drew down the man's back as he pushed in and out of her, easily mark where his mouth had been on her breasts by the reddened love-bites left behind.

Cara jolted away so hard that she narrowly landing her hand in the fire. Cursing and putting the singed tip of a finger into her mouth for a moment, she scrambled to her feet, doing her best to ignore how tightly her leathers were fitting at that moment, how conscious she was of her breasts pressing up against them and they way they clung to her thighs. She stomped out of the camp just as Kahlan and Richard were entering it again, hand in hand as they always were now, their clothing noticeably disheveled.

"Cara, what--" Richard started, reaching for Cara with one hand. He released Kahlan with the other and started to draw his sword instead; at least being well-bedded on a regular basis hadn't robbed him of _that_ instinct just yet, or it would not be long before they could all expect to be murdered.

No, not her, Cara amended to herself a second later. It didn't matter which battlefield the rest of them fell on, she would pick herself back up and walk on just fine.

"Did you hear anything?" Richard finished, while Kahlan leaned back on her heels slightly, not reaching for the daggers in her boots, watching Cara with a look that Cara had learned did not mean anything easy or pleasant some months before. It was Kahlan's _I'm going to help you whether you like it or not_ look, directed towards injured woodland creatures, minor criminals who could be frightened or enlightened into changing their ways, and one Mord'Sith who dearly wished that Kahlan would cease doing it. It always made her feel like a bit of a pet.

"Nothing," Cara said, easily shrugging back from Richard even though he had let his hand hover above her arm without actually touching her until she gave him leave. "I have some energy to burn off. I'm certain that you can sympathize." Richard betrayed his mother's blood rather than his father's every time that he flushed at a jibe rather than taking offense. Maybe he would never be a true Lord Rahl, or maybe he would be the best of any of them.

"Cara." Kahlan said, snagging at Cara's arm as she went past rather than giving her the dignity of distance that Richard had done. She did not seem terribly impressed by the long, slow stare that Cara bestowed first upon her own arm and then back up again at Kahlan's face, either. "It's not going to be like you think." Cara swore that she could feel the warm of Kahlan's palm even though the sturdiness of her leathers, meant to deflect errant sword-blows and minor swipes from the agiel, and that Kahlan was somehow turning it into a caress rather than the workaday, casual way that she had come to grab at Cara whenever she wanted her attention, as if the two of them had never been enemies at all. It wouldn't be much longer, if she kept down this path, but the only things with any cause to still be afraid of her would be fuzzy little baby deer and maybe the occasional squirrel. Cara tugged free and stomped away. She had worked herself into a very different kind of sweat by the time that she hurled a killed and cleaned rabbit down by the fire the next morning. Kahlan had a crafty look about her, and Richard far too open a face. Cara did her best not to notice.

*  
At least when Zedd had been with them, Richard and Kahlan had made an _attempt_ , however token, at taking themselves beyond the easy reach of human hearing before they fell on one another. Cara opened her eyes and looked up at the rustling canopy above her, muttering dire threats to the spirits under her breath as she listened to Richard murmuring to Kahlan from the other side of the fire, her low, feminine giggle as she apparently liked whatever it was that he was suggesting. If there were any errant night wisps about, then surely they could be no more scandalized by the things Cara was saying. She put her hands over her eyes as she heard Kahlan whisper Cara's own name, and then Richard answering, "Are you sure?"

"If you're asking if I can hear you, then the answer is _yes_ ," Cara snapped before rising to her feet and making certain that she had her agiels before she started to stomp out of the camp. "If the Lord Rahl doesn't think that he can wait until a suitable tavern can be reached--" They were going to be eating meat for breakfast every day if this kept up, or at the very least until either the novelty had faded and Richard and Kahlan had worn each other out. Cara, thinking of youthful vigor and the enduring pleasures of that particular kind of exercise, thought that the whole group of them is more likely to die of gout brought on my an excess of meat before that happened. She touched her fingers lightly to the tops of each agiel in turn, hissing slightly from between her teeth. Cara might not have been using them to quite the same ends as she did under the previous Lord Rahl, but they were still her constants.

Richard rose to his feet as Cara reached the edge of the camp, and she stopped herself before he said her name even though she could not stop her eyes from rolling. "I don't need my hand held," she started peevishly, turning and already knowing what was going to come out of Richard's mouth. Something about how he and Kahlan still cared for her, something about how this didn't change as much as she thought that it did, something about how she was not going to be edged out of the way and made useless. In other words, something very noble and unbearably Richard, and it was on the tip of Cara's tongue to tell him that she had already lived through the mercurial affections of the previous Lord Rahl and that she really doubted that he could do anything to compare. Any girl who wasted her time on hurt feelings didn't make it to the point of receiving her agiels.

On the tip of her tongue, broken off at the moment that Richard kissed her. Cara's fingers convulsed around the top of one of her agiels before she could halt herself. She felt Richard's slight intake of breath as the current passed through her body and into his, but he didn't stop right away. Denna, when she had been very tired and thus less guarded, when she and Cara had been on the same side, had been prone that Richard was one of the most stubborn men that she had ever attempted to train so long as he had something to hold onto. She had been in disgrace by then. Cara had not paid her much mind.

Richard is as gentle as Cara had always suspected that he would be, though not so nervous, and for a heartbeat she nearly forgot that Kahlan was there and watching them. The heartbeat after that realization, she pushed Richard away and found that her hand found a place of rest little closer to his throat, exposed through his partially opened shirt, than he likely would have been comfortable with some months before. Richard rocked back onto his heels and accepted the rebuke, while Cara looked over his shoulder towards Kahlan. Kahlan was leaning back on her elbows, her lips slightly parted, the dark green traveling dress that was so much more practical than her Confessor's gown hiked up about her legs. There was dirt on both of her knees. Cara had often wondered what her mouth would taste like, too.

"Well, then," she said, understanding. The previous Lord Rahl had often taken two women to his bed at once, often two Mord'Sith. Cara had somehow never expected that the current one would, or that she would be one of them.

Kahlan greeted Cara coming close with her hand upon the back of Cara's neck, tugging her down between Kahlan's knees and onto the hem of her gown. Kahlan's skin was very white against the fern-colored wool, and Cara's leathers were already too warm and much too restrictive in all of the wrong places. She could hardly blame the fire at her back, either. Cara turns her hip to keep her agiels from brushing inadvertently against Kahlan's skin and nearly had a very un-Mord'Sith-like stumble as she felt Richard anticipating the shimmy and putting his hands against her waist to steady her. The moment of surprise disappeared as Kahlan kissed Cara; she was not like Cara had fantasized, either, not shy or giggly or inexperienced, and she made an appreciative noise when Cara applied a few of the lessons that she had learned as a girl to Kahlan's mouth in turn. The hum of pleasure turned into a faint gasp as Cara worked her twin agiels out of her belt in order to lay them to the side, and Richard's hands still about her waist flexed.

"Yes, that happens," Cara said in a dry tone once the agiels are safely away from human flesh, though her hands feel empty without them. She found occupation for at least one of them by caressing the inside of Kahlan's dirty knee, much more human than the nearly goddess-like picture that the rest of her creates, and felt how warm Kahlan's skin was even through the glove the same way that she could still feel all of the sword-created calluses on Richard's hands. Cara bit lightly at Kahlan's lower lip to provide herself a distraction. "Did you like it?"

"Not if it hurts you," Richard said from behind her, flexing his thumbs lightly against the dip of her spine. Cara had been carrying a knot of tension there for days; she was caught out between embarrassment that she had been wearing herself that openly and something very near a purr as Richard worked it away with a few deft pushes against the right bundle of nerves.

 _May the Keeper--_ Cara had been relaxing up against the cleft of Kahlan's knee, her hand curved about the fire-warmed skin, but she clenched and pulled away too hard for misunderstanding. A furrow drew between Kahlan's brows, and Richard released his steadying grip.

"I," Cara whispered when she had recovered, and hating that she had needed to recover, leaning close up against Kahlan's mouth. They were sharing breath; Cara waited for Kahlan's pupils to dilate and then ran her tongue, so lightly, along the lower edge of Kahlan's lip. "Am not going to be bedded in order to salve anyone's conscience."

"Oh, that's not what's happening here," Kahlan said in a rush that quirked Cara's lips. "In the slightest. Trust us."

Cara hesitated, torn between an obvious answer and an even more obvious one, and then dipped her head to take back what she had given up. She kissed Kahlan like she meant it, then, licked the inside of her mouth and drew the tiniest of sighs. She must be doing a good job, Cara thought, and got her confirmation when Kahlan grabbed for the hand that Richard still had against Cara's waist.

"And here we were thinking that we would have to talk you into it," Richard said from behind Cara with a wryness that she had never heard from him before, partly ruined by the fact that he had started to breathe a little faster. Cara released Kahlan so that she could turn and kiss him, too, in the way where aggression became a burn that was half the point. She didn't pull back until his lips were swollen and then bit at the lower one in parting, not quite hard enough to bruise, and it was hard to tell pupil from iris until the firelight hit him just right by the time that Cara had finished. He ran his tongue along Cara's tiny hurt; Kahlan and Cara made nearly identical sounds in unison.

"Richard," Cara told him in the voice that she had originally developed to tell him that he was being an idiot, but that he was also her Lord and it was impolitic for her to tell him so directly. Now, it still means that he's being an idiot, but that she'll tolerate it because few are able to be morons with such kindness. "Not all of us are made for pining and sighs." She cut a glance Kahlan's way as she said it, but Kahlan clapped her hands to her mouth to smother a delighted little laugh.

"Come here, you," Kahlan said to Cara. Cara was happy to oblige, and happier still Kahlan did not intend for Cara's mouth to go unoccupied as she struggled with the laces of Cara's leathers. Richard aided; Cara alternated between kissing Kahlan, kissing him, and then leaning back to watch them kiss each other until all of their fingers were fat and clumsy, and Cara had to break away and start it herself if she ever wanted to wind up naked.

Richard and Kahlan kissed each other differently than either one of them kissed her. They were soft, nearly hesitant, as if they still could not quite convince themselves that it wouldn't go horribly wrong, or at least they had before tonight. Cara drew her gloves off, started at the laces at her shoulders, and watched as Kahlan gripped the front of Richard's shirt nearly hard enough to tear it and kissed him as if she meant to drink him once she finally managed to convince herself that her power was not going to overwhelm him. Richard pushed her traveling dress even further up her thighs, callused fingers obviously drawing a response as they trail over her skin. Cara could never understand how Kahlan managed to spend the same amount of time in the sun as the other three members of their traveling party and yet remained so pale; her face and hands resembled marble every bit as much as the expanses of her skin that only saw the sun while she was bathing. Richard and Kahlan continued to kiss, and Richard to keep one hand tangled within Kahlan's hair while the other moved upwards along the expanse of her thigh, beneath the tangle of her gown until she gasped when he touched her sex. Cara finished pulling her the encumbrance of her leathers down her legs and stretched, the prickle of all-over sweat that had been troubling her brushed away in seconds by a cool night breeze. She nearly felt secondary until Richard glanced her way and stopped.

"Cara," he said in a voice that was surprised, almost wondering, "you're golden."

Cara glanced back over her shoulder, took note of the fire at her back and the shimmer of amber and yellow that it was casting over her skin. It wasn't as if Richard hadn't seen her naked before, in the alternate future that only he could remember on top of a half-dozen other times when there was only one lake and she wasn't about to wait for modesty before she scrubbed the dirt out of her hair and the sweat from her skin, but during none of those times had there been a fire. It didn't take her more than a handful of seconds to start feeling uncomfortable over the way that Richard and Kahlan both were looking at her, as if she was something beautiful for reasons that had nothing to do with her form. She said dryly, "Imagine if Zedd were to finish his errand early and come back now."

The corner of Richard's mouth crooked up. "I'm not prepared to bury my grandfather just yet." He grabbed for Cara's hand and tugged her back down onto the blanket that Richard and Kahlan had at least had the good sense to spread out before they hatched this master plan of theirs, started to kiss her again. Cara nudged him back; her need for reassurance from this quarter ended some months before. Kahlan's was the body that she crawled up with all of the slinky grace she possessed, it was Kahlan's mouth that she took again with her own. Kahlan's hair was silky even with the layer of traveling grit that covers them all at this point, Kahlan's mouth was replacing hesitancy with eagerness almost faster than Cara could keep up. There wasn't any pause in the way that Kahlan cupped Cara's breasts and ran her thumb across each nipple until it was standing up and Cara was breathing faster against Kahlan's mouth, or when Kahlan took that as her cue to slide her hand further down and into the juncture between Cara's thighs where Cara had been slick and wanting since before she stripped nude.

"I had always wondered if Confessors were allowed to--oh!" Cara broke off and then ground out an oath as Kahlan found Cara's most sensitive place and then didn't leave it again, but Richard slid two fingers into her as well, his other hand splayed out across the small of her back and his mouth whispering endearments against her ear. Kahlan was biting hard at her lower lip in something that was either lust or an attempt not to let her smile grow too large just yet. Over the past several months, she had become increasingly amused by everything that Cara did, and it had taken Cara nearly as long to realize that there was no mockery in it.

It might have been too soon to congratulate herself on her wit in figuring at least that much out, if all of the other layers of what Kahlan's smiles could mean were only now being revealed to her. Kahlan kissed Cara's mouth while Richard kissed her neck, and they didn't kiss each other or cease their ministrations between her legs until Cara's body began to shiver and quake. Her cry would have been enough to waken even Zedd.

She slid down the length of Kahlan's form with a litheness that she ought not to have been capable of, still gathering her brains back together, and remarked to Kahlan's surprised expression, "You ought to be naked, too, this is hardly fair." Kahlan's traveling dress was next to useless, anyway, with what little distance Cara had to push it up further to expose Kahlan's sex and the coarse triangle of dark hair above it.

"Cara, what are you doing?" Kahlan started. Cara bit the inside of her mouth hard so that she would not make a comment about worlds that Kahlan and Richard had not yet had time to discover amidst their regular bouts of coupling quite yet, did not point out that coming of age among her Mord'Sith sisters had taught her a great many things about the female form, and pressed her lips to the side of Kahlan's dirty knee instead. Kahlan jumps and startled out something unladylike at the first touch of Cara's mouth on her, while Richard said something only half under his breath that would lose him a lady's company if she were of a mind to acknowledge it. He nudged Cara's legs apart, but even with his hands on her thighs and endearments being whispered again into her ear, Cara jumped as he entered her.

"Serves--serves you right," Kahlan managed, though she was breathing fairly hard from what Cara was doing to her and it was Cara's intention that within the next few moments Kahlan would no longer be capable of speech at all. "Oh, I didn't mean it, come back," she immediately added as Cara started to pull away, her hand on the back of Cara's neck. Cara could feel a curious thrumming starting across the surface of Kahlan's skin, the crackle of standing too close to a lightning bolt which meant that magic would be arriving soon, but the danger to herself didn't make her lean back again. Richard was filling her up from behind, his hands on her hips and his voice above her calling Kahlan, or perhaps her, or perhaps the both of them a series of lovely things in a low, nearly growling voice that Cara had previously only heard him use while fighting. She shouldn't have been surprised; the two acts were not nearly so different as poets liked to believe.

Richard spilled into her, leaving marks on her skin with his fingers. Kahlan was shivering beneath Cara's hands and mouth, making Cara feel as if she was standing at the outermost edge of a particularly powerful and dangerous thunderstorm. She didn't want to seek shelter, though, and made an annoyed sound when Richard pulled her back, hair-second before Kahlan arched and cried out, hard. Though Richard's arm was still about her waist and Cara was sticky with sweat and his seed, she still could help herself from feeling the tiniest pang of exclusion when Richard went to kiss Kahlan as she's still coming down and it would be obvious suicide for Cara to touch her, yet. Cara gasped and her eyes flew open wide as the tiniest parcel of Kahlan's power rippled through Richard's body and into Cara's, rendered harmless through the transmission but still enough to make the fine hairs on Cara's arms and legs stand up all the same.

"Do you like it?" Kahlan whispered to her.

It takes Cara half a second to remember what Richard had said to her, and only half a second beyond that to answer, " _Yes_."

End


End file.
